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Gossip

Season

Episode

Production Code

Airdate

Written by

Directed by

Episodes timeline

"Gossip" is the first episode of the season six of the office. It was written and directed by Paul Lieberstein. Overall, it was the show's 101st episode. It originally aired on September 17, 2009. It was viewed by 8.20 million people.

Contents

In the opening, Michael, Dwight, and Andy, are seen practicing "parkour", while wrecking the Office and bothering the employees. Jim, in an talking head interview, explains briefly about "parkour" and how to come up with a crazy way to get from Point A to Point B. He briefly jokes about the guys are likely to end up in the hospital. After practicing around the office, Michael proposes to jump on 2 refrigerator boxes and a dumpster from the top of a truck. Andy, overexcited, volunteers and ends up severely injuring himself when jumping onto a refrigerator box and sinking into the box.

In the episode, Michael spreads hurtful gossip about the rest of his employees after he is left out of the gossip loop when the rest of the office is heard talking about the departing summer interns. Meanwhile, after Michael creates a rumour that Andy is gay, Andy questions being homosexual to Oscar. Eventually so many rumors start spreading out, that Michael finally decides to say that Stanley is having an affair, but when he is about to say it, Jim says "That Pam is pregnant!" which happened to be one of the rumors, though Michael was stupid enough to say the one about Stanley.

Ryan asks the intern to make 20 copies of a paper, and he replies "you know you're not supposed to talk to me". Apparently, Ryan made him get tons of pennies from the bank to search for rare coins, getting Ryan banned from speaking with them. He said that it wasn't as bad as Dwight making them pass around messages instead of using IMs.

Dwight is teaching useless info to the interns through flash cards, and the intern says they should reference it later when they might need it. Dwight says a story of a restaurant customer talking to the waiter about the paper info. The waiter gets fired, starts their own paper company and hires the customer. The customer becomes rich. Dwight says that their generation would suck in a war, and he would fight in the Boer War in South Africa.

Dwight has the interns bring in a cake and they spaced on getting the candles. He says that if he said to duck and jump because a wrecking ball was coming towards your head and a sword to your feet, if you spaced on one you would die. He said that they suffered because the cake was for them. Pam and Jim taught them the defense for it and slapped Dwight in the head and kicked him when we was wondering what the defense was for it.

Dwight was given a paper apple by the intern. He said in the interview, "There must be 40 folds in this thing. 40 folds!"

parkour is a physical discipline of French origin involving the "traceur", or parkour practitioner, to traverse through obstacles from point A to point B in an efficient manner. It often involves serious training and can be dangerous at times when performed improperly (as demonstrated by Andy when jumping into the refrigerator box).

Jim, when explaining parkour, mentions that it had made an appearance in a "Bond film", referring to the 2006 version of Casino Royale.

Spartacus is a movie based on the life of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt from 73 to 71 BC. In the movie's climactic scene, the group of slaves is offered leniency in exchange for turning over Spartacus. Before Spartacus can offer himself, the slaves each individually proclaim, "I am Spartacus" and all share in his punishment. Michael is confused by this gesture of solidarity.

No move that Michael, Dwight, and Andy demonstrated in their "parkour" has anything to do with the moves actually performed in parkour.

The term "gainer", as noted by Andy, is an actual movement in freerunning which refers to performing a backflip while achieving forward momentum.

The only reason that Michael started the rumors was so that everyone would think the "rumor" about Stanley's affair, along with the others, was false. However, in the conference room, Michael tells everybody that Stanley is really having an affair, which of course defeats the purpose of starting the rumors in the first place. (Although Michael probably expected not to get caught and therefore to not need to reveal his intentions.)